ees (16% of firms) to more than 5,000 (5% of firms). Similarly, revenue sizes vary greatly: 23% of firms have rev- enue between $100 million and $400 million, but 19% have revenue exceed- ing $400 million and 12% are below the $10 million revenue mark. Dis- tributor respondents had anywhere from a single branch (13% of distribu- tors) to more than 20 (23%), although none reported having more than 100 branches.Examining Expectations Positive expectations for the economy in 2017 swamped negative views, with 55% of panelists saying they expect the economy to be better than in 2016 and only 5% saying it will be worse. (The remainder say it will be about the same.) However, those expecta- tions are tempered by uncertainty.One participant wrote, “While I firmly believe in the success of our company, the recent election has created a lot of unanswered questions directly related to importation, labor, health- care, etc. Most likely those questions will have both positive and negative answers, but our biggest fear is that with the unanswered questions, busi- nesses will be very cautious moving into 2017. NAFTA is a gigantic unan- swered question.” Overall, respondents were similarly upbeat about the outlook for con- struction (56% positive vs. 4% nega- tive) and the electrical industry (55% positive vs. 7% negative). They were markedly more optimistic about their own company’s prospects (72% posi- tive vs. 2% negative). On all of these questions, there isn’t a lot of differ- ence between manufacturers and dis- tributors in the shares holding posi- tive, negative, or neutral views. Respondents were asked to rate 14 economic factors as positive, negative, or about the same. Only changes to federal or state regulations scored a net positive (29% vs. 23% who rated it as negative). Healthcare costs were overwhelmingly deemed a negative factor (72% vs. 4% positive), and labor costs also scored a high negative read- ing (47% vs. 4% positive). For the other 11 factors, a majority listed the factor as neutral, although outside competition for sales drew nearly as high a net negative reading (44% negative vs. 3% positive) as labor costs. Interestingly, two factors— taxes and e-commerce by consumers —split evenly between positive and negative responses. Respondents then were asked to
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